News, articles and information about Jewish art, architecture, and historic sites. This blog includes material to be posted on the website of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (www.isjm.org).

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Liverpool, UK. Deane Rd. Jewish Cemetery. View during restoration from a large tree that was subsequently removed during the restoration. Photo: Tom Fowles, courtesy of Liverpool Old Hebrew Congregation

UK: Liverpool's Deane Road Jewish Cemetery Restoration and Conference

The Deane Road Jewish Cemetery in Liverpool, site of one of Europe's most ambitious recent Jewish cemetery restoration projects, will be the subject - along with other local cultural heritage efforts - of a one-day conference on heritage restoration on February 27, 2013. The cemetery's first burials were in 1837 and continued until 1904. It was abandoned and overgrown for much of the past century.

Restoration of the site is substantially complete this year, though a rigorous schedule of maintenance and repair needs to be maintained. The cemetery is still owned by the Liverpool Old Hebrew Congregation (LOHC), housed in the historic Princes Road Synagogue, one of the grandest Victorian synagogues surviving in the UK and the only Grade I listed synagogue outside of London. The synagogue has been object of a continuing restoration project since the 1990s and has received several recent grants (2008, 2010) from the Heritage Lottery Fund for roof repair.

The cemetery project is developed with help by an active group of volunteers from the congregation and the larger community. The volunteers maintain an impressive website about the cemetery and those buried there. The cleaning of the cemetery revealed many unknown gravestones and the volunteers have been researching and writing biographies of those buried in the cemetery.

There have been many attempts since the 1970s to clean and restore the 19th-century cemetery, but these have all failed. A new effort begun in 2003 received nearly £500,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2010 and this has allowed a full scale restoration to proceed, from the impressive Greek Revival gateway to finally addressing the problem of invasive and destructive vegetation. The size and scope of the project recalls that undertaken for the old Jewish cemetery in Florence, Italy more than decade ago.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

George Grosz, The Lecture (also known as Anti - Semite). Photocourtesy of Ben Uri Collection

London's Ben Uri Museum to Adds George Grosz's The Lecture (also known as Anti - Semite) to Its Growing Collectionby Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) The
Board of Trustees of the Ben Uri Museum in London has announced the acquisition of George Grosz's (1893-1959) ink and watercolor satiric sketch The Lecture (also known as Anti - Semite), an important work that depicts the radical Jewish writer Erich Mühsam, a friend of Grocz's who was murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934.Mühsam is shown as one of two heads on a poster a which a Nazi lecturer gesticulates.

The work has been donated to the Museum by Sally, Richard and
Andrew Kalman from their
family collection in honor of their late father Andras Kalman (1919 -
2007). Kalman came to study in England in 1939. When war broke out, he was cut
off from his parents and brothers in Hungary, who late perished in the Holocaust.

The Museum acquired Grosz’s
Nazi Interrogation, from the same period, in 2010. Grosz was one of the most prominentartists of the Weimar period. In Berlin, Grosz was a fierce critic of war and capitalism, and one of the most biting artistic opponents of the Nazis before their seizing power, and after he left Germany for America in 1932. Grosz was among the first Germans to be stripped of his citizenship by the Nazi regime.

Today, Grosz's son, who lives in Philadelphia, is still trying to regain some of the many Grosz paintings confiscated after his father left Germany. Many of these were sold by the Nazi's or surfaced after the war are are now in major museum collections. You can read more here and from the New York Times here.

George Grosz, The Interrogation. Photo courtesy of Ben Uri Collection

Ben Uri will mark the acquisition of the new Grosz work by launching its 'Holocaust
Education Through the Ben Uri Collection' website, a learning resource
for teachers and GCSE students created in partnership with the London
Grid for Learning. For a preview of the website please go
to: www.benuriholocaust.lgfl.net

The Ben Uri was founded in London's Jewish East End nearly a century ago, in 1915 (read history here), as ‘The Jewish National Decorative Art Association (London), “Ben Ouri”. The museum, in its present orgniazaiton, was founded in 2001 and recent years under the leadership of David Glasser has been greatly expanding its collection of works by artists of Jewish origin, and has mounted many important exhibits. In 2010 the museum acquired an important Chagall crucifixion, which then led to the mounting of an ambitious exhibition of modern crucifixions - many by Jewish artist. The collection is limited, however, by its small current space and continues to plan for a new and permanent home somewhere in Central London. Perhaps we will see that happen - or at least announced - in time for the centennial.For now, you can see around 400 selected works from the Ben Uri Collection (of over 1300) in the Museum's online gallery.

(ISJM) Ruth Ellen Gruber reports from Rome that plans for a Holocaust Museum at the Villa Torlonia move forward - but lentemente (slowly) Now, with the new museum Rome follows other towns and cities in Europe
such as Mechelen, Belgium which opened its new Museum and documentation
Center in December, and Drancy, France, which opened a new
facility last September. More and more these Holocaust museums and centers are
taking the form of high-design mausolea/boxes - in black, white or gray. These buildings strive for simplicity and dignity, and mostly fall back on simple modernism and minimalism for their architectural/sculptural form. In the case of the Rome Museum, the inscribed names of victims will symbolically enliven - or at least enlighten -the exterior. This will be the first Holocaust Museum in Italy, though there are many Jewish museums (Rome, Florence, Bologna) and memorial sites (especially that of Carpi, but also in Rome) that reference and commemorate the deportation of Italian Jews.

The design for the museum is by architects Luca Zevi and Giorgio Tamburini. Zevi is son of architect and critic Bruno Zevi (who compiled a masterful work on the architecture of Erich Mendelsohn, whose design for the hoped-for first-ever Holocaust memorial in Riverside Park, New York, was never built). Luca's mother Tullia Zevi was the head of the Italian Jewish community in the 1980s and 90s, when control of the Jewish catacombs was wrested from the Catholic Church and shared by the Jewish Community of Rome and the Rome archaeological superintendency. Historian Gav Rosenfeld (author of Building After Auschwitz: Jewish Architecture and the Memory of the Holocaust interviewed Luca Zevi about the project the The Daily Forward in 2011.

In the early 1990s I worked with Tullia and Prof. Giorgio Torraca on studies of the Jewish catacomb underneath the villa to ascertain what - if any - level of public visitation the fragile site could bear. The catacomb is the site of some of the most precious Late Antique (probably 4th century) Jewish painting and inscriptions. Significantly, many of these are about memory, and suggest some sense of an eternal life, the very themes to be enshrined in the new memorial/museum for the thousands of Italian Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Bureaucracy stalls construction of Italy’s first Holocaust museum

ROME (JTA) -- If all goes according to plan, a starkly modern, $30
million Holocaust museum will soon rise on the site of fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini’s Rome residence.The site, also the location of ancient Jewish catacombs and now a
city park, will be home to a museum first proposed in 2005 but held up
repeatedly by financial and bureaucratic problems.“I hope construction begins this summer,” Leone Paserman, the
president of the Museum of the Shoah Foundation, told JTA. “Of course in
Italy, it is always hard to say.”

The facility will be the first Holocaust museum in Italy, which
despite its wartime alliance with Nazi Germany has a somewhat mixed
Holocaust record. The country adopted fiercely anti-Semitic legislation
in 1938, barring Jews from schools, dismissing them from public
positions and outlawing intermarriage, among other restrictions.At the same time, the Italian military generally declined to take
part in the murder or deportation of the country’s Jews, and territories
occupied by Italian forces were considered relatively safe. The first
deportations to death camps came only after Nazi Germany occupied parts
of Italy in 1943 following the surrender of the fascist government to
allied forces.

(n.b. this article contains information provided by Marcia Haddad Ikonomopoulos, President, Association of Friends of Greek Jewry and the late Vincent Giordano)

(ISJM) Last summer, Congregation Kehila Kedosha Janina
(KKJ) in New York announced that the Jewish Cemetery in Ioannina, Greece, the
ancestral home of the Lower East Side congregation, has been designated an
historical landmark. KKJ submitted photographs of gravestones of the
cemetery identified as dating from the early 15th century to the Jewish Community
of Ioannina, who then submitted them to the Municipality of Ioannina (see the
websitekkjsm.orgfor
photos) and these helped secure the designation by the municipality. The oldest
gravestone discovered thus far is that of Rabbi Aaron Matathia Halevi and is
dated 1426. A second gravestone of similar styleis for Matathia Joseph Halevi. In 2009, when I wrote about this cemetery, and reported the prediction that such gravestones (and maybe even older ones) would be discovered.

On behalf of the Jewish Community of Ioannina
and its president, Moses Eliasof, KKJ now plans to move ahead with a fund
raising effort to enable a cleanup and restoration of the cemetery.

Tradition has it that gravestones were moved
from Ioannina's oldest cemeteries, which no longer survive, to the present
cemetery which was founded in the early 19th century on land purchased from Ali
Pasha.

The Zosimaia School now stands on this site of a
former Jewish cemetery, but it is not known from when it dates. At some
point after 1892, another cemetery was opened by the community in the Kalkan
area of the city. In 1922, a portion of this property was used to build
homes and at that time, the community began to use a field known as Gem for
their new cemetery; today's Bet Chaim Jewish Cemetery. It is not known if bodies were exhumed and moved, but gravestones of rabbis were moved and some of these are the ones recently discovered.

Over the gate to the cemetery is the Hebrew
inscription:

"The Almighty Who dwells among us has
allowed us to erect a wall around this field so they (the deceased) may repose
in the land of the living; for the consecration of the Society of the Righteous
(Hevra Hesed) and with the notables of the day."During the junta of 1967-1974, the military
wanted to take the unused property over. The Jewish community protested; since
the deed no longer existed, a legal battle followed and the community
prevailed. As part of the legal decision, it was stated that should the
Ioannina Jewish community cease to exist, the field would be turned over to the
Central Board of Jewish Communities in Athens.

In 1999 the local Jewish Community transferred
an area of 6,000 sq. m. of the cemetery to the Municipality of Ioannina.
The Municipality (claiming the change of the city plan) then trespassed
on a large part of the cemetery, and tried to expropriate the area. The
Central Board of the Jewish Communities of Greece, with the cooperation of the
local Jewish Community, strongly reacted, setting in play a series of events
that has led to better documentation and appreciation of the site. The
community in New York has acted as a strong lobbying force for the community in
Ioannina, making its presence known annually and assuring that the municipality
knows that the remaining Jewish Community of 32 does not stand alone.

The cemetery was been vandalized several times,most recently in 2009. The construction of a protective
wall around the cemetery in 2009 is designed to protect the cemetery and
clearly demarcate its boundaries.

The Jewish sites and community of Ioannina have long been of special interest to the international Survey of Jewish Monuments, which sponsored the documentary work of the late Vincent Giordano. Despite Vincent's death, ISJM still plans to proceed with completion of his Before the Flame Goes Out project.

(ISJM) The following is re-posted from the Kestenbaum &Company website, announcing a forthcoming auction of Judaica on January 31st. This sale includes as an especially large number of Judaica ritual objects and art works, many by noted Jewish artists of the 19th and 20th century. These are mostly graphic works, but there are two fine pastels by Artur Markowicz, and oils by Jozef Israels, Lazar Krestin, William Gropper and others. You can download the full illustrated catalogue. Even if you cannot afford to collect, you can use this catalogue as a handy reference.

Following the firm’s exclusive sale of Magnificent
Silver Judaica last month, Kestenbaum & Company is now pleased to
present on Thursday, January 31st at 3:00 pm, an auction of nearly 400
lots featuring the broad variety of Fine Judacia for which the company
is celebrated. In addition to Rare Books and Manuscripts, this
particular auction has an unusually strong section of Graphic Art
highlighted by the famous 18th century portrait of the Ba’al Shem of
London which is featured on the auction catalogue cover, as well as a
collection of very fine Epraim Moses Lilien artwork.

The celebrated painting of Hayim Samuel Jacob Falk,
the Ba’al Shem of London, was painted in the 1770s probably by the
French-British artist, Philip James de Loutherbourg. For more than a
century it was broadly accepted that this was a portrait of the Ba’al
Shem Tov himself. This framed oil on canvas is estimated at
$30,000-50,000 (Lot 287).

Ten fine engravings by E.M. Lilien, each beautifully
framed, that were purchased in the 1950s directly by the consignor from
the artist’s sister, are sure to be of interest to art collectors. The
highlight is a large watercolor from 1904 featuring the Biblical Moses
as Liberator designed for a stained glass window in Hamburg, Germany,
the pre-auction estimate for which is $10,000-15,000 (Lot 296). Also of
particular interest in this section is a large hand-colored Micrographic
Engraving for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur composed by Levi Van Gelder,
New York, circa 1865, estimate $15,000-20,000 (Lot 310) and a rare
engraved Portrait of Moses with the Ten Commandments in Hebrew by Hyam
Sakolski, New York, 1872 at an estimate of $5,000-7,000 (Lot 282).

A varied and interesting selection of Ceremonial Art
is being offered for auction. Particularly striking is a beautiful and
opulent late 19th century Continental gold Megillah case housing a
Scroll of Esther on vellum, estimated at $30,000-50,000 (Lot 334).
Another rarity of gold Judaica is an attractive Louis XIV-style Torah
Pointer applied with jewels, at an estimate of $10,000-15,000 (Lot 335).
Further highlights include an Italian illuminated Scroll of Esther,
18th century, estimate $10,000-12,000 (Lot 358), an Italian silver-bound
Prayer-Book, estimate $4,000-6,000 (Lot 359), and a miniature Bezalel
silver Megillah case housing an illustrated Esther Scroll, circa 1920,
estimate $1,500-2,000 (Lot 357). Also featured are Chanukah Lamps,
Kiddush Cups and Spice Towers. Particularly noteworthy within a section
devoted to textiles is an exceptionally fine 19th century embroidered
linen Torah Binder, previously in the Collection of the Hechal Shlomo
Museum of Jerusalem, at an estimate of $5,000-7,000 (Lot 368).

Among the Manuscripts to be auctioned, the most noteworthy is an Ibn Ezra, Peirush HaTorah,
written in 1381, the earliest known Hebrew Manuscript written in
Kastoria, Macedonia, at an estimate of $50,000-70,000 (Lot 255). Further
Â highlights include Sepher Rav Mordechai (Riva di Trento,
1559) with extensive contemporary marginal notes written by a student of
the great Rabbi Moses Isserles, estimate $10,000-15,000 (Lot 256) and a
large esoteric 18th century Kabbalistic chart on vellum describing the
Creation, at an estimate of $10,000-15,000 (Lot 257). Also notable are
two autograph manuscript pages of Birkei YosefÂ by Chaim
Joseph David Azulai, circa 1770, estimate $5,000-7,000 (Lot 245) and
Rabbi Elazar Menachem Shach’s personal copy of the Chidushei RabbeinuChaim Halevi (Brisk, 1936) with his autograph marginal notes, at an estimate of $4,000-6,000 (Lot 271).

Of note among the Autograph Letters section are
letters written by R. Chaim Zanvil Abramowitz (The Ribnitzer Rebbe),
David Friedlaender, R. Yisroel Meir Kagan (The Chofetz Chaim), R.
Yisroel Perlow (The Yanukah), Rebbetzin Shterna-Sorah Schneerson, and a
letter fromÂ the Eidah HaChareidith written to R. Yoel Teitelbaum, the
Satmar Rebbe, from Jerusalem, 1965 (Lot 278).

Fine examples of 16th century Hebrew books are two rare, circa 1515, Constantinople imprints: Shimon ben Tzemach Duran’s Pirush HaKethubah, estimate $10,000-12,000 (Lot 70) and Mishpatei Hacherem, Vehanidui, Vehanezipha,
at an estimate of $10,000-12,000 (Lot 171). Most prominent among later
Hebrew printed books is the first edition of Judah Aryeh Modena’s Tzemach Tzadik, a scarce illustrated book of fables, Venice, 1600, estimate $25,000-30,000; Menasseh ben Israel’s Nishmath Chaim
with the rare engraved portrait of the author, Amsterdam, 1652,
estimate $15,000-20,000 (Lot 159) and a Bible with two finely
hand-colored title pages and bound in an elaborate 18th century Dutch
binding, Amsterdam, 1726, at an estimate of 7,000-9,000 (Lot 39).
Leading a strong section of Chassidic books is a complete early edition
of Elimelech of Lizhensk’s No’am Elimelech, Slavuta, 1794, at an estimate of $20,000-25,000 (Lot 44).

Other significant books include the first edition of Martin Luther’s work of Antisemitica, Vom Schem Hamphoras,
Wittemberg, 1543, estimate $4,000-6,000 (Lot 22), the first separate
publication of Karl Marx’s essay “On the Jewish Question”, London, 1896,
estimate of $2,000-3,000 (Lot 158) and the first kosher cook-book in
the English language, 1846, at an estimate of $6,000-8,000 (Lot 67).

Further categories within the Printed Books section
of the auction include Americana, Anglo-Judaica, Liturgy, Illustrated
Books, French material, Passover Hagadahs, Holocaust related books and
important books related to The Enlightenment

For further information relating to bidding or any other queries, please contact Jackie Insel at 212-366-1197 or
Jackie@kestenbaum.net.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Latvia: Rezekne Green Synagogue Restoration Updateby Samuel D. Gruber(ISJM) David Michaelson has provided me with an update and links on the long hoped for/planned restoration of the GreenSynagogue of Rezekne, Latvia, a project which he first brought to my attention almost ten years ago. David's great-grandparents were from Rezekne, a town which had the substantial Jewish population of around 20,000 people before 1900. At the time of the Second World War only 10,000 Jews lived there, and now only small number - a few dozen Jews at most - still live there. He and his wife first visited Rezekne in 2003 and were shown the closed and dilapidated (Green Synagogue, built 1845) by Rashel Kuklya, head of the small Jewish community. The building was last used by the Jewish community in the early 1990s.

The Green Synagogue, which is built of wood, is the only synagogue building (of at least 11) to have survived in Rezekne. While the government had considered restoring the building as a museum, the cost of the project (then estimated at $160,000 - $165,000) was daunting. At that time the emphasis on Jewish heritage and Holocaust commemoration projects was in Riga, the capital of the country and where most of the country's Jews live today (Riga's beautiful Egyptian Revival/Art Nouveau Peitav synagogue was restored in 2009). The Kadisha Synagogue in Daugavpils was also restored in the past decade. But the survival of the Green Synagogue is now more important than ever, since the wooden synagogue in Subate, Latvia, was destroyed in 2009.

David, however, was not to be put off. With some assistance from the International Survey of Jewish Monuments and Meier Melers of the Jews of Latvia museum in Riga, David was able to submit an application to the World Monuments Fund, which WMF approved for funding of a preservation plan. At first, the hope was the EU funding would become available for the restoration. Eventually, however, a Norwegian team adopted the project and after several attempts received funding. It appears that the WMF-funded plan is still the basis for the project, which will begin this spring.

Norway is not a member of the European Union, but to have access to the European markest,
the country is required through the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA Agreement) to support projects in "new" EU countries. The GreenSynagogue project is one of these, costing 711 000 EURO (close to one million US dollars). 85% of the funding come from Norwegian
grants, 10% is from the Latvian culture ministry, and 5% from the Rezekne municipality.

It is interesting to note that the basis of the project is the exchange of restoration, craft and education skills between Norway and Latvia, and unlike similar projects funded by international donors, the Jewish history and significance of the building did not (at least overtly) play a major part the scope of the project.

The restoration of the building will engage students and teachers from Sam
Eyde vgs, the Lunznava vocational school, the technical school Vilanu, the Rezekne
art school and local artisans in Latgale; organize and strengthen cooperation between regional (latgalske),
National (Latvian) and international (Norwegian) craftsmen, teachers,
students and authorities; organize workshops for participants to develop meeting and communication models; and rain craftsmen, teachers and students in the restoration of wooden structures.

According
to the project website the synagogue was chosen because the wooden
construction is similar to that in Norway from the beginning of 18th
century (the synagogue was built around 1845), it is not
privately owned, and it is the only surviving wooden synagogue in the
area.

The
Green Synagogue is one-and-a-half story square-plan building with a
shallow four-slope roof. The facade is modest; the windows of the
ground floor have semicircle lintels, and above them are "blind
windows". Inside, benches, bimah and Ark are still intact, but these may not be original to the building. A one-and-a-half story glazed gallery is
above the main entrance. The building suffered significant
water damage until the roof was repaired with government funds a few
years ago. The interior painted ceilings are in bad condition with
sections missing and the interior walls also are damaged. Overall,
the exterior is in better condition but also shows signs of damaged
timbers including some damage that may be the result of vandalism
over the years.

After restoration (which should take 18-24 months) the synagogue will
be a part of the Latgale (which is the region of Latvia Rezekne is in)
Cultural Museum. It will be available for use as a synagogue upon request. It is not clear how this work, but militarism arrangements have been made at restored historic synagogues in other countries.

Here is the Norwegian website describing the project: (Google Translate does a good job with it)

The very first talk I ever gave about synagogue architecture (at the College Art Association in Houston in 1988) was about the little B'nai Abraham synagogue in my ancestral town of Brenham, Texas. I've always been interested in the development of synagogue architecture in the American south and west - since the history of Jews in those areas is in many ways so different from the best-known narrative of the East-coast American Jewish experience.

I've posted on this blog and elsewhere about southern synagogues on several occasions. Here is a call for papers from the Southern Jewish Historical Society. I'm thinking about submitting a proposal for a paper of session about southern synagogue architecture - if only because I've never been to Birmingham and there are buildings old and new I'd like to see there, including the near-100-year-old Temple Emanuel, one of the country's best surviving (domed) classical-style synagogues. If you are working on a related topic - a single building, an architect or a building type, let me know.

Lee Shai Weissbach's excellent book the TheSynagogues of Kentucky remains the best introduction to the varieties of types of styles to be found in the region and some of the social and religious circumstances leading to their construction and use. but there have been some other good local studies of specifically Jewish sites, and Jewish sites within local historical and architectural contexts.For those wanting to know more about some southern synagogues and their communities, check out the Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities edited by Stuart Rockoff of the Institute of Southern Jewish life.

Since 1977, the Southern Jewish Historical Society has worked to foster scholarship about the experience of southern Jews. With an annual conference, academic journal, and active grant and award programs, the society has helped to move southern Jewish history from the margins of the American Jewish narrative into the mainstream. For more information about the SJHS, please go to http://www.jewishsouth.org/.The Southern Jewish Historical Society will hold its annual conference on November 1-3, 2013, in Birmingham, Alabama. 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations, and the SJHS meeting will be part of the city's commemoration of the events. Although the history of Jews and the Civil Rights Movement will be of particular interest, we invite the submission of paper proposals that deal with all dimensions of southern Jewish history. Submission of panel proposals will also be considered.Paper proposals are due by March 15, 2013. Abstracts should not exceed more than one page. Submissions should include an abstract, a CV, and contact information. For panel proposals, please include abstracts of each paper, CVs for presenters and panel organizer, and contact information for all participants.Please submit your proposal to Dan Puckett at dpuckett45442@troy.edu.For additional information please contact:Dr. Dan Puckett at (334) 241-5478 or Dr. Stuart Rockoff at (601) 362-6357(Rockoff@isjl.org)

(ISJM) King Albert II of Belgium opened a new Holocaust and Human Rights Center in Mechelen, Belgium in early December, 2012. The new white cube-like building (actually its a pentagon) is situated adjacent to the18th-century Kazerne Dossin (barracks) that served as a last-stop transit camp for Belgian Jews begin shipped to their deaths at Auschwitz.

According to the Museum website:

"The old Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance is now a
memorial, a place of reflection for victims and their relatives, while a
brand-new building – a white monolith - opposite the old barracks
houses the permanent historical exhibition. The new building occupies the site of the former detention building,
opposite the barracks, emphatically marking the spot where the events of
the Second World War unfolded....The museum is
pentagon-shaped with large expanses of glass on one side and bricked-up
windows on the other. On top of the building is a terrace which looks
out over the old barracks.

The infrastructure is designed to accommodate school and other groups
as well as individual visitors. With four floors of galleries, a
spacious auditorium, cafeteria and two educational areas, the museum has
everything it takes to put itself on the map nationally and
internationally."

The Mechelen transit camp site was strategically sited at a major rail junction halfway between Brussels and Antwerp, the major Jewish population centers of the country. In the 1980s part of the complex was renovated for housing, but part became the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, which opened in 1995 due to the initiative of Belgium's Jewish community. In 2001, the government began an expansion of the institution with the construction of a new complex opposite the old
barracks. This new facility houses an expanded museum, documentation center and memorial.

The new building was designed by Flemish architect bOb Van Reeth and financed by
the Flemish government. The 25,852
bricks used in the construction are meant to signify the number of Jews and Roma sent to Auschwitz from the barracks, located just a few meters away. Read more abut the new center here.

In related news, last summer Antwerp Mayor Patrick Janssens announced plans for a commemorative monument to
the city's Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Mechelen was the site of several incidents of Jewish resistant and prisoner escapes. According to Wikipedia, based on the research of Maxime Steinberg: "The Belgian Jewish underground, assisted by the Belgian resistance,
derailed several trains carrying Jews from the camp to Auschwitz during
1942–1943. Though most of these people were soon put on the next
transports, about 500 Jewish prisoners did manage to escape. At an
attempted escape on 19 April 1943, resistance fighters stopped the 20th transport near the train station of Boortmeerbeek,
10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south-east of Mechelen. 231 prisoners managed to
flee although 90 were eventually recaptured and 26 were shot by train
escort guards. you can read a more detailed history fo the camp by Lawrence Schram here:

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

In the past I've written about the exceptional work being done in the Czech Republic to restore and present notable Jewish historic and architectural sites. Since at least 2009 plans have been laid to create a linked network of sites with exhibitions and tourist infra-structure to help draw visitors out of Prague and to explore the fascinating, beautiful and still-oft preserved place of Jewish history throughout the country. As Ruth E. Gruber reports in an JTA article, the plan for what is essentially a nation-wide Jewish museum,is now moving ahead with significant support from the EU.

New Czech Jewish museum to spread exhibits across 10 sites nationwide

PRAGUE (JTA) -- A large Jewish museum set to open in the
Czech Republic in October will be a far cry from any Jewish museum in
Europe.Instead of one building or a complex of exhibition halls in one city,
it will be a nationwide museum comprising 10 linked thematic
exhibitions in 10 restored synagogue buildings located in as many
different towns and cities.Called 10 Stars, the project is being coordinated by the Czech
Federation of Jewish Communities, which owns the buildings, with the
bulk of the funding coming from a $14 million grant from the European
Union. About 15 percent of the financing is being provided by the Czech
Culture Ministry.

“It’s actually one museum scattered around the country,” said Tomas Kraus, the executive director of the federation.“The exhibition in each site will be linked to one certain phenomenon
in Jewish history, culture, religion, traditions,” he said. “The idea
is that if you visit one of the sites, even by chance, you will realize
that there are nine other parts of the exhibition, so you will want to
visit them, too.”Read the full article here

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Welcome

This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sites - especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.

About Me

Samuel D. GruberI am a cultural heritage consultant involved in a wide variety of
documentation, research, preservation, planning, publication, exhibition
and education projects in America and abroad.
I was trained as a medievalist, architectural historian and
archaeologist, but for 25 years my special expertise has developed in
Jewish art, architecture and historic sites. My various blogs about Jewish Art and Monuments, Central New York and Public Art and Memory allow me to
clear my email and my desk, and to report on some of my travels, by
passing on to a broader public just some of the interesting and
compelling information from projects I am working on, or am following.
Feel free to contact me for more information on any of the topics
posted, or if you have a project of your own you would like to discuss.

My Lectures & Presentations

“The Stone Shall be a Witness: Strategies for the Preservation and Presentation of Destroyed Structures,” Presentation at International Conference “How to Commemorate the Great Synagogue of Vilna Site?,” Vilnius, Lithuania Sept 4-5, 2017.